Hedging With Other Phrases
If you have completed the previous practice, you have now reviewed hedging with adverbials and verbs. There are a few other ways we can hedge.
Adjectives
We can add adjectives that show uncertainty:
- Can happen:
- possible
- feasible
- viable
- plausible
- Has a strong chance to happen:
- probable
- likely
- expected
Introductory Phrases
By combining the adjectives above with IT and other introductory clauses, we can hedge without changing the original idea very much.
- IT + BE + ADJ + THAT introductory clauses:
- It is likely that + clause
- It is expected that + clause
- It is possible that + clause
- S + BE + ADJ + TO
- We are likely to…
- It is possible to…
- This phenomenon is expected to….
Nouns
We can also combine THERE and nouns of uncertainty to hedge.
- NOUNS:
- assumption
- likelihood
- possibility
- probability
- tendency
- THERE + BE + NOUN + THAT introductory clauses:
- There is the expectation that…
- There is a possibility that…